Super Villain
大“反”派
China, 2024, colour, 2.35/1.85/1.33:1, 97 mins.
Director: Bao Bei’er 包贝尔.
Associate director: Zhang Zuofeng 张作峰.
Rating: 4/10.
Painfully unfunny comedy about an ambitious actor who loses his memory and thinks he really is the villain in his current movie.
STORY
Qingdao city, northern China, 2023. After failing the audition for the main villain, Zhao Dongshan, in high-profile thriller A Long Planned Kidnapping Case 绑架大富豪 by accidentally setting the hair of the director (Jia Bing) on fire, ambitious actor Bi Chao (Bao Bei’er), aware of his declining popularity and desperate to get the role that will save his career, gets his manager (Yu Yang) to arrange a publicity stunt on the red carpet of the Gana Film Festival. However, the stunt goes disastrously wrong, and the part has already been given to sycophantic actor Zhang (Wen Zhang) anyway. However, when Zhang is injured by a horse kicking him on a TV drama, Bi Chao gets the role after all – though when he announces it to his wife Wu Wen (Lamuyangzi) and young daughter Bi Xiao’ai (Kong Zirou), the latter is not impressed, accusing him of again neglecting his family in his relentless pursuit of fame. As production starts, the famous actor, Fang Zihua (Wei Xiang), playing the kidnapped tycoon turns out to be a vain egotist, and the actress, Bingbing (Yi Seong-min), playing the villain’s wife is a complete airhead. Bi Chao can’t stop making unwelcome suggestions to the director, and at home Wu Wen threatens to leave him. One night, Bi Chao has a serious car accident with a van driven by three petty gangsters (Zhou Dayong, Ma Xudong, Zhazha) peddling expensive fish; he wakes up not knowing who he is or where he is. From various studio artifacts in his car, including a wanted notice with his face on it, he imagines he is Zhao Dongshan, the villain in the film. Next day, using clues amongst the film material in his car, he goes off in search of the tycoon he is meant to kidnap. Meanwhile, the film is running behind because of Bi Chao’s disappearance. Bi Chao eventually ends up at Oriental Film City 东方影都, where the film is being shot, and tries to kidnap Fang Zihao. He also mistakes Bingbing for his real wife.
REVIEW
An actor loses his memory and starts believing in his role for real in Super Villain 大“反”派, a painfully unfunny comedy starring and directed by baby-faced Mainland comic Bao Bei’er 包贝尔 in his fourth feature outing behind the lens. Coming hot on the heels of Bao’s previous star-director gig, What’s in the Zoo? 动物园里有什么？ (shot in mid-2021 but only released in Jan 2024, under a pseudonym), it took a nothing RMB57 million at the box office – half that of Zoo and nowhere near Bao’s first directorial outing, Fat Buddies 胖子行动队 (2018, RMB261 million). There’s a funny movie to be made out of an actor taking a role too seriously, but this isn’t it and Bao, who can be okay in the right parts, is miscast.
Both of Bao’s previous two directing gigs, Zoo and Sunny Sisters 阳光姐妹淘 (2021), were based on South Korean originals; Super Villain is based on a French comedy, Superwho? Super-héros malgré lui (2021), directed, co-written by and starring Philippe Lacheau (Babysitting, 2014) as a hopeless actor who loses his memory while dressed in a Badman (sic) suit and thinks he’s really the cartoon hero. It’s a pleasant, very French comedy that’s far less ambitious than Super Villain, whose script – by Bao’s regular writers Zhang Peng 张鹏 and Song Chengwei 宋成魏 – only uses the original’s basic idea and then constructs a way-too-elaborate plot around it.
One of the busiest actors in the Mainland, Harbin-born Bao, now 40, has a career that’s now two decades long but arguably hit its peak in the mid-2010s with films like So Young 致我们终将逝去的青春 (2013), Lost in Hong Kong 港囧 (2015) and When Larry Met Mary 陆垚知马俐 (2016). He’s a marmite figure who deeply divides Mainland audiences, and has never really managed to make it as a leading actor on his own. In some respects, his character in Super Villain could be seen as an acid self-portrait, though the film ultimately lacks any self-reflection and, worst of all, is just not very funny. Most of the humour comes from other actor pals in the cameo-packed cast, especially Jia Bing 贾冰 as a testy film director, Wei Xiang 魏翔 as an egotistical superstar, Swiss-born Korean Yi Seong-min 이성민 | 李成敏 [Clara Lee] as an airhead actress, Inner Mongolian comedienne Lamuyangzi 辣目洋子 (aka Li Jiaqi 李嘉琦, Fat Buddies) as a tart-tongued wife, and Yin Zheng 尹正 as a put-upon taxi driver. Wen Zhang 文章, with whom Bao made When Larry Met Mary and Fat Buddies, appears only briefly, alas, as a sycophantic actor competing for the same role.
Bao and his writers set the dial at maximum throughout, with everything (performances, editing, music) over-stated to a cartoonish extent. Even the aspect ratio keeps changing – from 2.35 down to 1.33 and back again – and when you think it’s all over, the end titles are scrolled in reverse. Bao seems to lack confidence in the material to such an extent that he’s determined not to let his audience have time to think about it. In fact, that approach works against the comedy, especially when the lead actor can’t carry a movie. Even with a wig concealing his trademark bald pate, Bao ultimately lacks screen authority and leading-man status.
Qingdao’s massive new film studio gets a big plug, as “Oriental Film City” 东方影都. Photography by new name Zhao Xiaofeng 赵晓峰 is fine. Associate director was Zhang Zuofeng 张作峰, director of micro-drama Imperial Doctor 御赐小医仙 (2021). The “Gana Film Festival”, which appears in a scene early on, is a skit on the Cannes Film Festival, as “Cannes” is rendered in Chinese as 戛纳 gānà.
CREDITS
Presented by Guangming Shijie (Shenzhen) Pictures (CN), Beijing T Meng Pictures (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN), Haining Hippo Universal Film (CN).
Script: Zhang Peng, Song Chengwei. Photography: Zhao Xiaofeng. Editing: Fu Yan, Huang Zeng Hongchen. Music: Bodee Borjigin. Ar direction: Chen Weiren. Styling: Liang Jiang’er. Sound: Xu Chen. Action: Qin Pengfei. Visual effects: Li Li, Ma Shuaiju. Executive direction: Ren Zhengguang.
Cast: Bao Bei’er (Bi Chao), Lamuyangzi [Li Jiaqi] (Wu Wen, Bi Chao’s wife), Zhou Dayong (Lao Da), Ma Xudong (Lao Er), Zhazha (Lao San), Kong Zirou (Bi Xiao’ai, Bi Chao’s daughter), Yi Seong-min [Clara Lee] (Bingbing), Yu Yang (Xu, Bi Chao’s manager), Wei Xiang (Fang Zihua), Jia Bing (film director), Yang Haoyu (film producer), Yin Zheng (taxi driver), Wang Xun (props man), Chang Yuan (presenter), Wen Zhang (Zhang, actor), Wang Chengsi (youth), Zhang Yiming (petrol-station attendant), Wang Tianfang (cleaner), Lv Yan (pharmacist), Zhang Baiqiao (Zhang Baiqiao, reporter), Kukude Teng [Teng Zhe], Zhang Youwei (passers-by), Debai [Ma Yixin] (night bird), Tian Xueqin (prop man’s wife), Jiang Yifan (security head).
Release: China, 4 Apr 2024.